Sweet Mother's Day

Dr. Gary Heikkila

Saturday

May 11, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Sunday is Mother’s Day, one of the sweetest days in the entire world. I wish that I had the eloquence to pay tribute worthy of the wonderful goodness of my mother to me and of course, of your mother to you.

Sunday is Mother’s Day, one of the sweetest days in the entire world. I wish that I had the eloquence to pay tribute worthy of the wonderful goodness of my mother to me and of course, of your mother to you.

There is something about mothers and Mother’s Day that goes across every boundary in human life. There are boundaries for the state, the nation, culture and tribes, but there are no boundaries for a mother’s love. It is universal.

A little fellow said to his mother, “Why don’t babies talk?” The mother said to the boy, “Well, babies don’t talk.” The boy said, “Mommy, our Sunday school teacher read to us out of the Bible that Job cursed, the day he was born.”

Have you ever visited the memorial where Abraham Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Illinois? It is one of the impressive monuments on the earth. There you can read the words of Secretary of War Stanton when Lincoln died: “Now he belongs to the ages.” Also there is, the tremendous Lincoln Monument in Washington, overlooking the Potomac River, facing the Congressional Mall with its Washington Monument and the Congressional parliaments.

But most of all, you can see the Lincoln Memorial in Hodgenville, Kentucky, where Lincoln was born. It is a beautiful monument built over the tiny log cabin in which he was born.

The monument faces the south; across it are written these words: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” On the inside a sentence forever from Abraham Lincoln, “All I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” You read that tribute to his angel and sainted mother. I thought of Lincoln as a nine-year-old boy with his father, digging the grave and carrying her there in the soil and in the earth of Kentucky: shaping the history of the world.

Constantine, the first Christian in the emperorship of the Roman Empire, was won to God by Helena his mother. Think of the great Saint Augustine, the infidel and finally the great theologian, won to the Lord by Monica, his mother. I think of Vladimir, the tremendously powerful and gifted commander and emperor of the vast nation of Russia, won to the Lord by his mother Olga. Vladimir shaped the history of the world and identified with the faith.

You can go to the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago, where Billy Sunday was converted. On one side of that mission you read John 3:16, and on the other side, “When did you last write to Mother?” Isn’t that an amazing thing! John 3:16, and by the side of it, “When did you last write last to your mother?” It seems to me that a godly mother is identified with the gospel of Christ and the saving message of the Lord Jesus, our hope and our heaven.

When God became incarnate, He became incarnate in a mother’s womb. And the first beatitude in the New Testament is to her, “Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Mary was present at the first miracle of our Lord. She was there, in that last moment when Jesus was seen by the world, standing by the cross and the prophecy of Simeon was coming to pass: “And a sword shall pierce thy soul also” (Luke 2:35).

To the Romans, those three malefactors were put to death. They were executed. That was the Roman way, universal then, of seeking to deter the work and activity of a criminal. But to Mary, standing there at the cross, it was her beloved Son. And as the Lord Jesus looked down from His crucified throne, he said to John, “Behold your mother.” And to His dear mother, “Mother, behold your son” (John 19: 26-27). What an astonishing thing! In the midst of His dying for the sins of the world, “John, take care of My mother.” At that point her children did not believe in Him.

Society asks, “What are His lineage and His ancestry?” Business asks, “What are His emoluments and His worth?” The law asks, “What are His records and His virtues?” Politics asks, “What are His influence and His elective power?” And the school asks, “What are His degrees and His education?” But mother asks, “What can I do to help and to remember and to love?”

An angel was sent to bring back to heaven - from earth - the sweetest, most beautiful things he could find. When the angel returned, he had brought back a fleecy cloud, a beautiful flower, a baby’s smile, and a mother’s love.

In “The Bravest Battle,” by Joaquin Miller we read:

“The bravest battle that was ever fought,Shall I tell you where and when?On the maps of the world, you will find it not.Twas fought, by the mothers of men.”

My mother, Agnes Charlotte (Carlson) Heikkila, died October 5, 1980. She would be 101 years old this year. Her name and memory is forever engraved on my heart. Every Mother’s Day, there’s a tear in my heart because I am no longer able to remember her on that special day.

“If I should be living when Jesus comesAnd could know the day and the hour,I’d like to be standing at Mother’s grave,When Jesus comes in His power.There’s coming a time when I can go homeTo meet my loved ones up there.Then I shall see Jesus before His throneIn that bright city so fair.Twill be a wonderful, happy dayGathered on that golden strandWhen I can hear Jesus my Savior say,‘Son, greet your mother again.’”

(Author unknown)

How indebted we are for so much; our Lord, our hope of heaven, our sainted mothers, and the preciousness of the day when we’re all together again.

(Dr. Gary Heikkila is a Master Chaplain for Homeland Security, CMC. He has ministered in Gardner and the New England area for over fifty years. He is now a Minister-at-Large. His book, “From Hollywood to Calvary,” is available from Barnes and Noble, Amazon, or WestBow Press, 866-928-1240.)